I must know the truth behind my daughter's death

Annie had spent several months in Edinburgh the previous year, and was now settling in well there, finding a flat in the city's West End and a six-month work placement at the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre, a job she really loved.

But just two months later, her time in Scotland ended in tragedy. On Sunday, 4 December last year, an early-morning dog-walker found her dead body washed up on the foreshore at Prestwick. Annie was a strong swimmer but, at the onset of winter, such a pursuit would have been far from her mind.

A post-mortem examination concluded Annie Brjesson, who was wearing shoes, jeans and a red T-shirt when she died, had drowned. Strathclyde detectives trained in investigating grisly murders told her family she had committed suicide or suffered an accident.

But her anguished mother, Guje, is convinced foul play was involved in her daughter's death. She is convinced the police and the local procurator-fiscal have overlooked a series of odd, unexplained circumstances which led her to believe Annie was murdered.

The details which Annie's family and friends have been unable to cast from their minds include bruises on her body, the apparent mutilation of her long blonde hair and the fact that she appeared to have been making her way home to Sweden via Prestwick airport.

They cite the last phone conversation Guje had with her daughter on 2 December, two days before she was found dead.

Guje says: "She told me there was something she had to deal with. She didn't want to tell me what it was, but she didn't sound her usual self.

"I was really worried and thought she would call back. We had a very good relationship, so I knew if there was something upsetting her, we could help.

"If Annie was intending to fly home to Sweden that day, which seems likely, she had not told her family about it. It appeared as if she was in a hurry.

"Some yards from her body they found her bag, inside which were her passport and two library books she wanted to bring back to Sweden. But her address book, which she usually always carried, was missing. She was found close to Prestwick Airport, from where she [always flew] home. I believe she was under some kind of threat before she died."

The notion that someone killed her daughter was in Guje's head from the moment the Swedish police came to her home, late on the Sunday night, to break the tragic news. "My first thought was that she had been murdered," she says.

A post-mortem examination was carried out at Crosshouse Hospital in Ayr on 7 December. It concluded that Annie, who spoke six languages including Hungarian, Finnish and Spanish, had died from drowning. The report mentioned bruising on the left of her nose, adding: "There is a small area of bruising, 20mm in maximum dimension, in the right temple which is not seen externally."

How the injury occurred was not described, neither were there any explanations as to why she drowned.

Annie's mother, who insists there were also bruises on her trunk which were not mentioned by the pathologists, has her own theory. "We think somebody hit her so she fainted and was drowned," she says. Her suspicions were also raised when she found her daughter's fair hair had been crudely hacked off, leaving her with rough clumps where it was once long, smooth and well-groomed.

The funeral company that dealt with the body, Global Networks, wrote to Guje admitting they had cut "four or five centimetres" of Annie's hair to improve her appearance, but Guje says that does not tally with how her daughter looked when she was returned to the family's home, 150km north of Gothenburg.

The investigation carried out by Strathclyde Police, she says, only added to her frustrations.

"From the second day [after Annie's body was found] they started talking about suicide. The conversation would go like this: 'It was suicide and maybe we will never know what happened.' That was what they were telling me for about eight weeks. Then the officer in charge of the investigation suggested it could have been an accident.

"He suggested that maybe she could have walked on a wall near the water. Maybe she went there without her coat and she fell from the wall and didn't put her hands out to protect her fall. It took him eight weeks to tell me that maybe it was an accident," she says.

The 53-year-old insists her pleas for information have fallen on deaf ears. "I have repeatedly requested all the autopsy material from the procurator fiscal and films from CCTV where she was last seen, and they don't give me anything. They didn't even request the footage from the train stations to see if she got [to Prestwick] by the train. They went to her room for a quick investigation after two days, and didn't go back until ten weeks after she died to hear from people who knew her. "When they went there they scared away her flatmate, a girl from India. They told her it was a suicide. She was so shocked she fell ill and went back to India."

Annie's last e-mail was to the former Scotland rugby star Martin Leslie, 34, whom she had befriended during her time in Edinburgh. Her family say there was nothing in the message to suggest she was suicidal.

Desperate for answers, Guje's son, Charlie, and husband, Hudah Karoly, travelled to Ayrshire in March to visit the place where Annie died. They hoped the journey would allow them to come to terms with Annie's death, but it only sparked further concern.

"At first the police didn't even know where she was found. It took them five minutes to decide where she was. The police pointed to some kind of water stream by the wall, but she was found 50 metres from there," she said.

Guje was devastated when the Crown Office informed her of their belief that Annie's death was not suspicious, and urged prosecutors to review the case. But any hopes of a fresh investigation appeared to end when, on 19 May, the principal procurator-fiscal depute in Ayr, Robert Bloomer, wrote a letter to Guje informing her that Crown Counsel had decided "there should be no further proceedings", ruling out the possibility of a Fatal Accident Inquiry.

The fiscal's office has promised to review the case in November, but will only consider taking further action if fresh evidence comes to light.

Annie's family is now offering her beloved Harley Davidson motorbike as a reward for any information which leads to a murder conviction. "It is worth 10,000, but nobody wants to drive it now," Guje says.

She insists her search for answers is based on a genuine, justifiable belief that her daughter was murdered - given what she sees as the odd, unresolved mysteries surrounding Annie's death - rather than a grieving mother's inability to accept the loss of a child.

"That's out of the question," she says. "I wouldn't have put myself into this kind of torture, and my family, if I wasn't convinced Annie was the victim of a crime.

"All her friends in Sweden think somebody killed her. They think things don't match because of the circumstances about the library books, [and because of] where she was found, 120 km from where she lived.

"Annie was a very broadminded girl, she laughed loud and cried loud. She talked her troubles out and she went on in life even stronger.

"All I want is a proper criminal investigation into her death. Police are also refusing to investigate what happened to her body after death. It seems in Scotland you can do what you want to a corpse. That's an awful situation."

A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police said Annie's death was "fully investigated by police at the time, and the report of the circumstances surrounding her death was submitted to the procurator fiscal".

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Crown Office said staff have been in regular contact with Annie's family, updating them on the case.

She added: "The fiscal at Ayr submitted a report to Crown Counsel looking at all the facts and circumstances surrounding the death, and Crown Counsel has instructed there should be no Fatal Accident Inquiry. At present there is no evidence that a crime has occurred.

"Any new information that is made available to the procurator-fiscal will be given consideration."